DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.572#0049
PART I. HOUSE ARCHITECTURE. 21
arabesque scrolls, and masses of red paint covering
the walls, that so greatly excited the displeasure of
Vitruvius.*
If a motive of defence led to the addition of
the lofty towers, to the simple early Egyptian tem-
ple, its peculiar aspect was still preserved in the
rest of the building; but the private mansion as-
sumed a form both novel and arbitrary. Rows of
columns rose one over the other, in each successive
story ; the upper ones supporting a platform, or
canopy, which covered the open space they en-
closed ; and the slender style of column,' intro-
duced into domestic architecture, affected the
unprecedented anomaly of extending from the
ground nearly to the top of the house.
These tiers of columns probably gave Vitruvius
his idea of an Egyptian oecus; unless he refers to
the upper pillars, and windows, of the great halls .
of assembly, in which he may have fancied some
" resemblance to a basilica." f
Both the interior, and exterior, of Egyptian
houses were stuccoed and painted; the doorways of
the larger mansions being frequently of stone, as in
the lai-ge crude brick enclosures of the temples;
* Vitruvius says formerly real objects were represented, or stories
from the Trojan war, or the wanderings of Ulysses; but now monsters,
or reeds for columns, and candelabra supporting roofs and buildings, and
stalks of flowers in whirls, with figures coming out of them; impossi-
bilities, devised by a depraved taste; whole walls too are covered with
minium, which the ancients only employed very sparingly, like physic.
t Vitruv. lib. vi. v. p. 26'5. "In /Kgypliis autem supra columnas
epistylia.....deinde supra epistylium ad perpendiculum inferiorum eo-
lumnarum, imponendce sunt minores quarta parte columnce. . . . et inter
columnas superiores fenestra; collocautur, ita basilicarum ea similitudo
• • . . videtur esse."
arabesque scrolls, and masses of red paint covering
the walls, that so greatly excited the displeasure of
Vitruvius.*
If a motive of defence led to the addition of
the lofty towers, to the simple early Egyptian tem-
ple, its peculiar aspect was still preserved in the
rest of the building; but the private mansion as-
sumed a form both novel and arbitrary. Rows of
columns rose one over the other, in each successive
story ; the upper ones supporting a platform, or
canopy, which covered the open space they en-
closed ; and the slender style of column,' intro-
duced into domestic architecture, affected the
unprecedented anomaly of extending from the
ground nearly to the top of the house.
These tiers of columns probably gave Vitruvius
his idea of an Egyptian oecus; unless he refers to
the upper pillars, and windows, of the great halls .
of assembly, in which he may have fancied some
" resemblance to a basilica." f
Both the interior, and exterior, of Egyptian
houses were stuccoed and painted; the doorways of
the larger mansions being frequently of stone, as in
the lai-ge crude brick enclosures of the temples;
* Vitruvius says formerly real objects were represented, or stories
from the Trojan war, or the wanderings of Ulysses; but now monsters,
or reeds for columns, and candelabra supporting roofs and buildings, and
stalks of flowers in whirls, with figures coming out of them; impossi-
bilities, devised by a depraved taste; whole walls too are covered with
minium, which the ancients only employed very sparingly, like physic.
t Vitruv. lib. vi. v. p. 26'5. "In /Kgypliis autem supra columnas
epistylia.....deinde supra epistylium ad perpendiculum inferiorum eo-
lumnarum, imponendce sunt minores quarta parte columnce. . . . et inter
columnas superiores fenestra; collocautur, ita basilicarum ea similitudo
• • . . videtur esse."